


Blue Tulips in Red Paper

by svelteism



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mid-Canon, Post-Betrayal, Purple Prose, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23475025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svelteism/pseuds/svelteism
Summary: Scorpia is gone and the curtain is drawn.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra), No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Blue Tulips in Red Paper

She can't stand to admit it, so she doesn't. Catra has always been adept at eluding reason. Life has not ever so much as spared her a shred that made any lick of sense, let alone answer for the crimes committed against her. For all its worth, reason has only ever hurt Catra, trained her to forego the dialogue and see the conclusion naked in all its horrible truth. If anyone ever bothered to provide reasoning for their actions against Catra, it was only ever to solidify their innocence. No, Catra did not ask for reasons anymore. One can only handle so much guilt at such a young age before they stop seeking motives and start demanding results. Results are gold or gravel in the Fright Zone. Her superiors made it quite clear since her childhood that reasoning would not spare her consequence.

Reasons don't matter. Only results.

Scorpia is gone. A result with reasons Catra knows, but refuses to admit to.

Catra can't stand to confess to herself, so she doesn't. Not out loud, anyway. The agony leaks out in ways that convince even the most daring soldiers in the Fright Zone shy away from her path. It takes everything to keep the rations down, fury and anguish roiling so hotly in her belly that even water is nauseating. Dizziness takes her head and swings it through the claustrophobic hallways like a tether-ball; even the chilling breeze from the higher walkways of the Zone, metallic with rust and iron soot from the refinery, barely quells the swimming behind her eyes. Catra’s ailing body begs her to lie down, to sleep for the first time in months, something cathartic and dreamless. No such thing would come; she has tried over and over again. There is not a single monitor in the security wing free of jagged claw marks or spiderweb of fractures. Her body grows weary of the restlessness, begs her to yield to the limitations its owner fails to recognize. It’s Catra’s spirit that keeps her haunting the corridors and cargo bays of the Fright Zone through the hours of the night and it’s her frail heart, locked deep behind layers of arrogance and deceit and anger, that takes her to Scorpia’s quarters.

Not even Adora’s bunk sates this violence anymore. Catra has torn the sheets and blankets to shreds so many times now that none of the bedding belongs to her childhood friend anymore. Someone— she suspects Lonnie— made an impressive attempt with a lacking array of supplies to remove the scribbled visages of unfamiliar children and fill in the trenches of betrayal marked by Catra’s claws. The archive of an era, now erased and invaded by a new recruit who will always wonder why someone used rations to caulk away the seeping edges of a broken dream. There is nothing of Adora left there, only phantoms of an ugly childhood that trickle in the cracks of her latest wound.

Scorpia is gone. Yet, the signs of her existence among the Horde remain. Fresh and palpable. Scorpia’s presence is not just scars on Catra’s psyche, poorly bandaged and not fully healed and echoing with the honor of a god Catra's never heard of before, glaring with a light from a Runestone that turned her friend into a monster. They are not the same and this breed of regret comes with an undeniable guilt. Scorpia is gone, but not entirely. There is still a stage for Catra to go through now-familiar motions before an empty auditorium. Still a shrine for Catra to bleed and make bleed upon, a curse and a testament, prayers in screams and tears. Understanding and suffering in the same breath. A pariah at the helm of conquest, alone in her fears and damned by her pain, she performs a solo act of terror and of loneliness and of bone-aching, heart-shattering confusion. But it's not confusion who stars in tonight's showing. Catra knows what she has done. The knowledge of recognizing her failing is a new dagger in her side, one she placed there herself. Scorpia is gone. It is Catra's fault. She has refused to come clean with herself, but Adora tells her in feverish hours of the night that she had left Catra, but Catra had left Scorpia.

The door clicks shut. A light patrol halts at the sound and turns away with a whisper. The officer branch of the barracks is cloaked in a pounding silence that breathes apprehension. A vigil stands near one of the guard posts; Force Captains abstaining from sleep in a cocktail of respect and fear for their commander.

Catra chokes on a black tar that crawls up her throat with a poison fed to her as a kit. Bows her back as it blinds her, sending hot tears through her fur that will make her face itch until noon next day. To her knees she is commanded by her pain. And she begins her soliloquy to a night that will forget her by the sun's rise, as all things seem to do.

**Author's Note:**

> So, um, I watched the entirety of SPoP in three days and to cope with the fact that season 5 isn't coming out until May, I thought relentlessly about Catra. She's such a complex character and I love her for it! I also find it funny that this is the first time I've written fanfiction in years and it's for She-ra, of all things.  
> Thank you for reading! Feedback welcome and appreciated!


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